Google Earth exposes North Korea’s secret prison camps

The NGOs working for human rights have found something shocking in North Korea. They have found a network of prison camps along the North Korea’s countryside and are believed to have more than 200,000 people who were deemed to be hostile for the regime.

The NGOs are pressuring United Nation’s commissioner hard to open an investigation on Pyongyang’s prison camps are they believe they are violating the human rights, according to them the prisoners are treated brutally in these camps for more than 50 years.

On the other hand, Pyongyang’s officials have denied all these claims and acclaim all these an international propaganda. They even denied the existence of the prison within their part. But, on January 18 another camp’s picture released on Google earth. According to an analyst, this new camp sits really near to camp 14 and has a perimeter of 13 miles. These images came after a gap of nearly 7 years.

While analyzing this new camp from inside the analyst said it two check points, 6 guard post, office buildings and a number of accommodation units. The camp also has a mine field which doesn’t seems to operational, concluded the analyst.

These prisons have been really brutal on the people; many families here are punished life time imprisonment and are made to remain on some unhygienic food and accommodations. The prisoners are made to eat rates and kernels of different animals. During recent years, very few have managed to escape out of the prisons; remaining prisoners are left to live miserable lives.

According to a report, 40 percent of the prisoners die due unhygienic food, torture by guards or sexual violence. People in prisons are required to work as many as 16 hours a day in difficult conditions; one example is coal mine.

The Human rights commission reports tell that majority of these prisoners are the people who were trying to get out of the country through illegal means in search of better food and accommodation. The prisoners kept for severe violence against politics were very less.

A new report from United Nations lauds the role of Google Earth’s role in finding out this violent act is significant and said:

“The dramatically improved, higher resolution satellite imagery now available through Google Earth allows the former prisoners to identify their former barracks and houses, their former execution grounds and other landmarks in the camps,” it notes.

“The North Korean regime hiding and distorting the harsh reality of North Korea’s unforgiving political prison camp system is no longer an option,” said Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the

organization. “With constant satellite imagery, we can maintain a watch over these camps even if no outside entry is allowed.”

The United Nations is now marching towards a strong action against these camps in order to end these brutal and illegal acts on human.

Waqas Amir is a UK-based cybersecurity journalist with a passion for covering latest happenings in cyber security and tech world. In addition to being the founder of this website, Waqas is also into gaming, reading and investigative journalism.

HACKREAD is a News Platform that centers on InfoSec, Cyber Crime, Privacy, Surveillance and Hacking News with full-scale reviews on Social Media Platforms & Technology trends. Founded in 2011, HackRead is based in Milan, Italy.